It's the time!

Please see the link: http://www.stringsmagazine.com/search/ssg/default.aspx

It's that time of year to think about summer plans. Here is a very comprehensive listing of summer festivals/schools/camps (mostly for stringed intruments because it's from strings magazine!). I know many of you don't want to spend your exciting summer at a music camp, but I strongly recommend for everyone to attend one of the summer camps here because it will give you vast improvement in your playing skill. Not only from good faculties, practices, but you'll also learn a lot from other friends and musicians around you who will be coming from all over the world to the camps. These camps are challenging but definately you will earn something! Audition dates and deadline are coming, so hurry!

IF A GREAT MUSICIAN PLAYS GREAT MUSIC BUT NO ONE HEARS . . . WAS HE REALLY ANY GOOD?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/04/AR2007040401721.html?referrer=emailarticle Please click this link.


This article has been out for a long time, but I think it is still interesting.
My question is..If a great musician plays great music but no one hears..was he really any good?..
In my opinion, I think he is.. because first of all, he is famous alreay, he plays for his own musical happiness, playing music is not alway to show to others and he doesn't has to be recognized by other people to be judge as a good musician or not. It's the people who don't know about music or don't know anything about famous musicians, or they are too busy to listen and don't have time to stay for a musician. I hope people have more time in their mind and in their heart to calm themselves in their regural life. The world is getting busy and so as many people nowadays. After I read this article, I always look around and look once more at musicians when I see them in stations..Who knows..it might be a famous musician who I really want to see! :)

Posture and Form

-Brahms Sonatensatz played by Jascha Heifetz

For all the musicians, posture and form are extremely important. It is because as all good teachers say and especially my former teacher says, "Power = Violin up, left elbow up!" If any violinist can't figure out what it means, check Jascha Heifetz's posture, form and bowing to playing this music perfectly. His bowholding is very relaxed, lightly holded, no tension on his arm, arm moves very straight, light touch on the strings but makes heavy, sticky, full sound and his bow figers move naturally, flexibly. The relaxation on his posture, I need to learn it!

if only they had something similar for violin...HAHA

Just for fun..
I always liked to watch this duos playing piano and violin. They perform beutiful musics in a different way as general classic musicians do. They use tools, adds comedy, variety shows into their performance and not only that, they are amazing players as well.
More information and more videos check out:
http://igudesmanandjoo.com

Controversy: Facebook Group "People who DON'T clap between movements"

The group "People who DON'T clap between movements" has over 35000 members, including some of my friends, and I find it disturbingly pretentious...

Any composer before the twentieth-century would have been offended had there not been clapping in between movements. Mozart wrote of his delight when audiences would clap during passages in his "Paris" symphony K297 -- while the symphony was still playing! Brahms complained when people didn't clap enough between movements at the premiere of his first piano concerto. Even in the twentieth-century, at the American premiere of a Shostakovich symphony by the Chicago Symphony, an old man stood up and yelled "Bravo" after the first movement, while people glared at him-- it was Shostakovich himself.The idea of silence is an oddly modern construct, while the opera, ballet, jazz, etc. have not taken on this performance practice. The megalomanic conductors of the early twentieth-century gave rise to this audience control and I must say it feels unnatural to perform the end of the first movement of Sibelius concerto with such a big flourish to a silent audience response.

So my question is, is there anything wrong with listeners expressing their uncontrollable awe of your playing? Have audiences become so passive and unopinionated that they only clap when they know they are supposed to?

Security in Memorization

Here are some Security in Memorization that I would recommend everyone to try with.

Four facets of memorization are:
1.Tactile (least reliable under stress)
2. Visual: visualizing the printed page
3. By ear
4. Analytical (most reliable under stress)

Practicing memorization:
1. Divide a piece into sections, number each section, be able to start at any number.
2. Work backwards from the end, phrase by phrase: set the metronome. Give yourself an exact number of counts to think, then go back and play the next-to-last phrase. When you finish, wait, count, go back to the phrase before that, and so forth. The goal is to reduce the metronome count from, say, 8 to 4, to 2, to 1, to 0.

To check for security in memorization, try these tests:
1. Play the whole piece at a painfully slow tempo (if necessary, use metronome set to 60 to the 16th note, for example)
2. Think every note and finger associated with each note away from the violin.
3. Sing your part from start to finish.
4. Take any phrase, start any measure on any beat. Be sure the fingering is unchanged.
Do not do these tests right before a performance!

Remember that memory slips are most likely to occur in:
1. Passages that are similar but not exactly the same. -- mark the differences on the score
2. Passages with rhythmic complications
3. Modulatory passages. Analyze the keys
4. Bass line or bottom notes of chord progressions. Analyze the bassline motion.

The purposeful playing of everynote will guard against memory blackouts. Your intentions for each and every note must be perfectly clear to you. Your mind needs to be as active as your fingers and bow. The more you plan and map out the piece, even create a storyline, the less likely you will get lost.
1. Refresh your memory by studying the score visually and trying to imagine how it sounds and exactly how your hands would look and feel with the violin. Then play the piece slowly through with the music.
2. From memory, play the right hand as softly as possible and the left hand as forte as possible throughout, then do the reverse.
3. Play the piece through with your eyes closed. play slower than usual
4. Go through all the correct motions as if you were making sounds but do not press your fingers all the way down
5. play through the piece very slowly in pianissimo
6. Combine the visial, aural, and tactile senses in "mental" practice. Close your eyes and try to "hear" the music. Try to imagine how your fingers/bow "feel" on the violin and how the music "looks" on the page. If you cannot "see" the music, don't be concerned. It is more impoartant to "hear" it mentally and visualize how your hands look on the vioin and bow if you played.

Good luck everyone!!

Music lessons pay off in higher earnings: poll

Music lessons pay off in higher earnings... unless you're a musician!
Enjoy!


TORONTO (Reuters) - Those hours practicing piano scales or singing with a choral group weren't for nothing because people with a background in music tend to have a higher education and earn more, according to a new survey.

The poll by Harris Interactive, an independent research company, showed that 88 percent of people with a post-graduate education were involved in music while in school, and 83 percent of people earning $150,000 or more had a music education.

"Part of it is the discipline itself in learning music, it's a rigorous discipline, and in an ensemble situation, there's a great deal of working with others. Those types of skills stand you well in careers later in life," said John Mahlmann, of the National Association for Music Education in Reston, Virginia, which assisted in the survey.

In addition to the practical skills gained from studying music, people questioned in the online poll said it also gave them a sense of personal fulfillment.

Students who found music to be extremely or very influential to their fulfillment were those who had vocal lessons and who played in a garage band. Nearly 80 percent of the 2,565 people who took part in the survey last month who were still involved in music felt the same way.

"That's the beauty of music, that they can bring both hard work and enjoyment together, which doesn't always happen elsewhere," Mahlmann added in and interview.